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D R E A M S A N D N I G H T M A R E S

Dreams are a series of images, sounds, thoughts and emotions that the mind can experience

during sleep. Dreams create a fantasy world where many emotions can be present: fear, pain, joy,

anxiety, etc. They can represent two things: the minds way of escaping from real life or an expression

of hidden feelings towards cer tain events. Yet the most fascinating thing about dreams is that, except inthe case of lucid dreaming, people dream without even being aware that they are dreaming.

Bob Dylan narrates a dream in his song entitled I dreamed I saw St. Augustine. It is a song about

religion which questions mankinds faith. St. Augustine wears a coat of solid gold and has fiery breath,

two things that are not normally connected with a saint. In the end of the song the poetic voice

realizes that he is amidst the ones who put St. Augustine to death. St. Augustine represents the

spiritual life, a way of life that mankind destroyed by worshiping earthly pleasures.

The poetic voice awakes from the dream only to realize that the damage is already done and hat he

cannot change mankind of himself. The dreamer wakes up in order to put an end to the horrible

dream, something which he cannot do because the dream changed his way to understand humanity.

A dream also appears in Paul SimmonsAmerican Tune. It is a song about homesickness. The voice

tells us that he is weary, something that should be expected because he is far away from home. He

thinks that something went wrong in his journey in life. The voice seems to be stuck on a routine

which he cannot get away from.

The dream appears in the third stanza. In this stanza the poetic voice tells us that he dreamed he was

dying, and then he saw how his soul rose from his boy and looked back at him from the sky. The

poetic voice is divided into two parts: a body and a soul.

While in the first part of the dream the poetic voice seems to be inside the body staring at his soul, in

the second part of the poem the vision seems to be the other way round. The poetic voice is in the

soul. He is flying and he can see the statue of liber ty sailing away to sea.

This vision, that of the statue of liberty sailing away, can be understood in two different ways: It could

mean that the poetic voice is flying away from Liberty Island, and because of this the statue seems to

disappear into the horizon as if it were moving. This dream could also represent the poetic voices

need for movement. The poetic voice needs to get away from his boring life and leave America. He is

homesick. The stanza ends with the line And I dreamed I was crying. This line emphasizes the poetic

voices frustration and his homesickness. This new dream seems to be a nightmare, because in it he

realizes that he cannot achieve freedom. He dreams that he is free but then the dream becomes a

vision of reality: he cannot fly away and he feels the need to cry.

In this dream we can see how the poetic voice does things that he longs to do in real life. He

longs for freedom, and he can taste what it is like to be free in his dreams, even if it is just par t of hisimagination.

Dreams are not always uncontrollable. A dreamer can dream awake, and in those types of

dreams actions can be controlled. Dreaming awake is something most people do in order to get away

from life or to fantasize about it.

This type of dream is present in Langston Hughes poem entitled Let America be America Again. This

poem is about the American Dream. The American Dream is an ideal of what people want to achieve

in life: Wealth, Freedom and Equality.

In this poem, the poetic voice addresses America as a dream:

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamedLet it be that great strong land of love

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Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

The poetic voice addresses his country, America, as a dream. He is a dreamer who dreams of a

better country for all those people who cannot aspire to achieve the American Dream.

He wants freedom and equality for the blacks and for the oppressed so that they can live in theAmerica of the American Dream, a land of freedom and hope for everybody, not just for the rich

whites.

The dream is this poem is not a physical dream but rather a hopeful vision of a different reality, and

the dreamer is aware of both realities. The dreamed America is an idilic place which only exists in the

minds of the poor, the blacks, the immigrants, the indians, etc. It is a collective dream which is

expressed through a single poetic voice.

In this case we can see how dreams give hope to the people, and also give them the strength needed

to tray and make them become true.

Dreams an nightmares are one of the themes in I know why the caged bird sings, a poem by Maya

Angelou. In this poem the poetic voice compares two birds: a free bird and a caged bird. The free birdlives in a world of freedom and brightness, while the caged bird lives in a world of anger and darkness.

The caged bird is the only one of the two that sings. This is because his wings are clipped and his feet

are tied, so the only thing left for him to do is to sing. The free bird does not need to sing because his

life is good and he can enjoy freedom.

The words dream and nightmare are present in the fifth stanza:

The caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

The cage is calledgrave of dreams because all of the birds dreams die in there. His dreams cannot

become true because he is caged. His dreams die in the cage. His songs are nightmare screamsbecause they represent his slavery. He is described as a shadow who, instead of singing, shouts-

Something which is supposed to be beautiful, like a birds song, is turned into a representation of

sadness and impotence.

After analyzing dreams we can come to the conclusion that dreams create a new reality to those

who cannot be free or achieve their goal in life: The enslaved, the oppressed, the poor, etc. Dreams

give them hope and represent something which they desire. This is not always good because they

contrast with real life. The dreams beauty enhances lifes darkness, because for them, for the people

who are unhappy, dreams represent what they cannot have. Just like in I know why the caged bird sings,dreams die and the only thing that is left is reality and nightmare screams.